Small Business Labs

Venture Capital Hard to Come By

Forbes has an article with a set of interesting statistics from the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds showing that venture capital is very hard to come by these days:

 - 90% of already-funded companies are unable to secure follow on venture funding

 - 60% of early stage funds are making new investments at this time

 - 75% of the venture backed funds cannot get bank financing

Our experience echos this data.  From what we are seeing, it is hard to secure early stage financing of any kind right now.  And B or C (or later) rounds are really hard to come by.

But early stage companies with strong value propositions and proven management teams can get funding.  

We are working with several firms that have either recently been funded or will likely get funding offers in the near future.  No one is real happy with the valuations and terms, but they are getting funded.

Foreign Policy on The Next Big Thing

Foreign Policy magazine has a special section of 13 essays with each looking at a trend that will likely impact the world in the coming years. 

Some are widely followed trends like genetic engineering, water, shifts in education and nano technology. 

Others are quite different than you usually see including trends on happiness and anger management, an odd and scary trend that seems highly unlikely. 

As Alvin Toffler says in his essay, the future will be filled with unexpected surprises (are there other kinds of surprises?). 

For those interested in trends and the future, it is a fun article that is well worth reading.

Fortune 500 Blog Adoption Continues to Grow

A recent research report by the Society of New Communications Research and the University of Mass shows that Fortune 500 company use of external facing blogs continues to grow.

The research shows that  81 Fortune 500 companies have external blogs. 

The research looks at externally facing blogs only.

McKinsey Rains on Cloud Computing

According to research by the management consulting firm McKinsey, cloud computing is over-hyped and may not be a good path for large corporations. 

Their analysis shows that cloud computing may be as much twice as expensive per unit of computing than traditional large corporate data centers are. 

However the report does point out that for smaller firms - which in McKinsey's world are companies with less than $500 million in revenue - cloud computing is a good idea.   Key quote from the study presentation:

"Clouds already make sense for many small and medium-sized businesses, but technical, operational and financial hurdles will need to be overcome before clouds will be used extensively by large public and private enterprises." 

As the presentation points out, cloud computing and cloud services provide small businesses with powerful IT capabilities at lower costs than traditional methods.   

ZD Net has more on this. 

Recipe Sites Cooking

Compete provides website data and analytics and their blog often has interesting nuggets of information.  A recent post covers the growing amounts of traffic online recipe and food sites are getting.  Key quote:

"Last month, people conducted 18 million searches that included the word “recipe,” more than a 50% increase in the number of searches from the year prior. Searches for “casserole” and “pasta,” both easy and low cost meal options, rose by 56%."

My mother served casseroles often.  The term still strikes fear in me. 

Here are the top recipe sites according to Compete:

     

Mompreneur's Home Business Employs 50-75

The Chicago Tribune profiles mompreneur Terry Thompson who has created a very large and thriving home-based transcription company.  Key quote from the owner:

“I purposely stayed at the million-dollar mark because I was a single mom and I had young children,” Thompson said. “So it was a conscious decision. Now that one is out of the house, and the other is in junior high, I’m ready to ramp this up.”

Her business hires contract transcribers and the company generally has 50-75 working on projects.  Her clients are companies needing to transcribe interviews, earnings reports, financial meetings, webcasts and podcasts.

Using a combination of technologies Thompson is able to manage her dispersed workforce and deliver high quality results to her clients. 

Pretty cool.

SBA Advocacy Report a Treasure Trove of Small Business Data

A fascinating study with the less than exciting title of Effective Federal Income Tax Rates Faced by Small Businesses in the United States was recently released by the SBA Office of Advocacy. 

The breadth and depth of small business data and analysis in the report is impressive.  And it going to take us quite a bit of time to digest it all. 

The focus of the report is on small business tax rates.  This is very timely given the debates around the impacts of Obama's tax proposals. 

But the report also contains detailed data on the number of small businesses, their legal structure and revenues and profits by type and size of small business. 

If you are into small business data (and who isn't?), this report is for you.

Delta Moving Call Centers Back to US

There is a steady of stream of companies moving their call centers back to the U.S. from overseas.  The latest is Delta Airlines.  Key quote from a Reuters story on the topic:

"The move makes the airline the latest U.S. company to decide the cost benefits of directing calls offshore are outweighed by backlash from costumers, the newspaper said in a story on its website."

I had no idea costumers traveled so much.   

Robot Round-up

Lots of recent robotics news, in part because the trade show Robo Business happened this week in Boston.  Here are some of the highlights:

BusinessWeek has an article on Kiva and their warehouse automation robots.  I've visited Kiva.  They have one of the coolest demos I have every seen.  The robots are cute and fun to watch.

PC World covers future uses of robots in health care, both as surgical tools and health care assistants for the world's aging population. 

Inside Bay Area has a story on Adept Technology, a company focused on the hard problem of robotic vision.

Scientific American has a series of article as part of a feature called Robots Among Us. 

Gizmodo reports on researchers building robots to take over mundane tasks from humans.

Popular Science reports on pole dancing robots (no, not that kind). 

The Boston Globe has a bunch of pictures of robots, including the one above.

And the Christian Science Monitor wonders why the President didn't get a robot dog.  Anyone remember Rags in the movie Sleeper?

Industrial robots have become quite common and the technology is rapidly spreading from factory floors to warehouses, offices and houses.  Driven in part by military research and spending, robots are becoming more capable, cheaper and much more prevalent.

Online Advertising Early Growth Faster Than Other Media

The Chart of the Day on Silicon Alley Insider shows total online advertising over its first 14 years versus broadcast and cable advertising during their first 14 years.

As you can see from the chart below, online advertising has grown much faster than any other advertising media has.  

    

This is not surprising.  Most new and successful technologies have diffused faster than technology from prior generations. 

Also, the ad industry is much bigger today than it was when broadcast TV or even Cable TV started.  This makes it easier for Internet advertising to outpace the growth of legacy ad systems.

But it is still impressive growth. 

And at least in some areas it seems to be continuing.  Over the last few months Smallbizlabs has been contacted by several ad networks. 

After reviewing our options we have chosen to go with the Forbes network.  We were already a content contributor to the Forbes network and it makes sense to extend our relationship with them.  We will be hosting ads starting next week.